On an evening in 1866 (exactly eight hundred years after the Battle of
Hastings) Mr. Henry Knight, a draper's manager, aged forty, dark,
clean-shaven, short, but not stout, sat in his sitting-room on the
second-floor over the shop which he managed in Oxford Street, London. He
was proud of that sitting-room, which represented the achievement of an
ideal, and he had a right to be proud of it. The rich green wall-paper
covered with peonies in full bloom (poisoning by arsenical wall-paper
had not yet been invented, or Mr. Knight's peonies would certainly have
had to flourish over a different hue) matched the magenta table-cloth of
the table at which Mr. Knight was writing, and the magenta table-cloth
matched the yellow roses which grew to more than exhibition size on the
Axminster carpet; and the fine elaborate effect thus produced was in no
way impaired, but rather enhanced and invigorated, by the mahogany
bookcase full of imperishable printed matter, the horsehair sofa netted
in a system of antimacassars, the waxen flowers in their glassy domes on
the marble mantelpiece, the Canterbury with its spiral columns, the
rosewood harmonium, and the posse of chintz-protected chairs. Mr.
Knight, who was a sincere and upright man, saw beauty in this apartment.
It uplifted his soul, like soft music in the gloaming, or a woman's
face.

Mr. Knight was writing in a large book. He paused in the act of
composition, and, putting the pen between his teeth, glanced through the
pages of the volume. They were filled with the drafts of letters which
he had addressed during the previous seven years to the editors of
various newspapers, including the _Times_, and several other organs
great then but now extinct. In a space underneath each letter had been
neatly gummed the printed copy, but here and there a letter lacked this
certificate of success, for Mr. Knight did not always contrive to reach
his public. The letters were signed with pseudonyms, such as A British
Citizen, Fiat Justitia, Audi Alteram Partem, Indignant, Disgusted, One
Who Knows, One Who Would Like to Know, Ratepayer, Taxpayer, Puzzled, and
Pro Bono Publico--especially Pro Bono Publico. Two letters, to a trade
periodical, were signed A Draper's Manager of Ten Years' Standing, and
one, to the _Clerkenwell News_, bore his own real name.

The letter upon which he was now engaged was numbered seventy-five in
the series, and made its appeal to the editor of the _Standard_. Having